Backstory: Last month, I asked you to answer a survey and rate a new feature that would help alert readers when your new book is out. Now, I’m going to share what authors and readers told us.

As we build our full app, I conduct many Zoom interviews with readers to understand what they like and don’t like as they use it. So far, almost 100% of readers are incredibly excited about getting alerts when a book series they love has a new book or about subscribing to be alerted when their favorite authors have a new release.

Readers say that Amazon/Goodreads doesn’t alert them to new releases and wish they could get alerts. This is my experience as well, as I do not get alerts for the authors I follow on those platforms.

So, given the excitement we are seeing from readers, we’ve built this into the app.

Where do we put this in the app?

When a user logs a read, they can opt in to alerts for the series or the author. This is a great time to do it, because they are also saving how they felt about the book.

We are already seeing our beta testers use this feature, which is a great sign (and backs up what we hear over Zoom and via emails).

Later this year, we will also be building these alerts into our Book Series Tracking and Favorite Author features as we build those (as well as our series/author pages within the app). To see how that will work in the app, read this page.

I also have a 10 min video preview of the app so far if you want to see how it is coming along (aiming for a public launch later this year):

I got feedback from a lot of authors, but if you didn’t share your feedback, please do that here if you want to help me out: https://tally.so/r/aQaPRv

Book DNA would give you a permanent link where readers can subscribe to be alerted when your new books are out, or when a new book in a book series you wrote is out.

The goal here is to give you an easy way to alert readers who love you about your new books. While also not requiring them to subscribe to your newsletter (as our data shows that many readers want alerts but don’t want to subscribe to author newsletters).

You could add this link to your email footer, social media, the backs of books, or anywhere you use to collect your fans.

We handle everything for you. We mark when the book is coming out, we send the emails, and manage the entire email/web ecosystem. We are already doing this for readers, so it is easy for us to do it for authors.

In my testing, most readers don’t want to subscribe to an author’s newsletter even when they love that author.

The most common reason is that they just want to know when a new book is out, not monthly updates from the author. I still think a newsletter is the #1 most valuable thing authors can do to collect their super fans for future book launches… but I realized we can help authors by giving readers a way to subscribe only to new book alerts and running that entire system for them.

Second, not to get too technical, but emails can be sent as “marketing emails” or “transactional emails.” Marketing emails have a much higher chance of going to spam or to special folders that readers don’t check as often. But with alerts, we can use the “transactional email” category, which has a much higher chance of reaching the reader’s inbox.

No, this would be 100% free for all authors.

We are already building the underlying functionality for readers, as it was the most requested feature in testing. I wanted to talk to authors to see if they wanted a page, and it was worth our time to build it.

This feature is designed to help authors notify readers who loved their book series that a new book in the series is out.

I tell authors that marketing book #2 or higher to someone who hasn’t read book #1 is almost worthless, and all the data I have backs that up (unless you are writing kids’ books or specific genres where people don’t read the series in order). So that warning is purely about marketing to readers who haven’t read the series yet.

Yep, so that is something totally different; that is all the work we do on the discovery side 😀. This is about turning your readers into fans and using your fan base to launch each subsequent book.

Full breakdown on both:

Yep, if you can do this yourself, please do this 😀.

If you want to do this yourself, just make a newsletter dedicated only to new book releases and one for each of the book series you have. The only downside is that newsletters won’t send as transactional emails, so you lose that benefit. And, you also lose the benefit of sending frequently as email providers want to see active lists (at least once a month). If you send a new book alert every 6 to 12 months, it's more likely to be marked as spam or given lower priority in the user’s inbox.

I’m building this because 99.9% of the authors I talk with don’t have this, and don’t have the technical skills to do it. Plus, we are already building it for readers due to demand.

Everything we’ve built is for all authors, and I was surprised to hear this. Can you email me to explain your thoughts? I’d love to chat!

This alert feature will be most beneficial to mid-list authors and higher. Why? Because if you have a steady stream of fans coming in, this will collect them more quickly. And those fans are the ones that will help you launch each subsequent book with more sales (like a big snowball rolling down a hill and gathering more and more snow).

This is one of the big benefits of our system: users opt in to the alerts, so we know they want them, and we can send them via transactional email, which means they will show up in their inbox.

Most readers I talk with don’t subscribe to their favorite author’s newsletter, but still want new book alerts. This is meant to fix that 😀.

For example, I want new book alerts for ~50 authors and ~125 series, but I only subscribe to two authors’ newsletters (because I like them personally and want their monthly updates).

Yep, so far in my testing, Amazon/Goodreads doesn’t work for the users I am talking with for new book alerts (including me). I don’t know Bookbub’s system, but if that works for you, please use it (I haven’t met any readers who used that yet).

And the problem with the newsletter is that readers want alerts but don’t want the monthly emails very often. I’m trying to bridge that gap if it helps some authors.

Social media only shows your post to a small percentage of your followers, so it is super ineffective for new book alerts. Only 1% to 3% of your followers might see your update in their feeds (background on rates by social media type).

I think if users are fans and want to know when a new book is out, they will sign up for an alert; otherwise, they just won’t click it.

I disagree strongly 😀

Gathering your fans in a place where you can contact them is the #1 most valuable thing you can do as an author, no matter your publishing frequency.

Why?

Your fans are the ones most likely to pre-order, buy, and spread your book via word of mouth. If you publish only 5 years this is basically working in the background to collect fans every single year, and then alert them when you have a new book coming out.

The most valuable thing authors can do is gather their fans, as those fans will:

And all of those things help your organic reach with Amazon.

I’d love it if every reader who loves your book joined your newsletter, but that isn’t happening, and based on my interviews with readers, you are leaving a HUGE segment of fans without an easy way to hear about your new book.

I want to bridge that gap for authors (if you don’t use us, I urge you to do this yourself or with another platform). I hope this breakdown helps explain how this would work.

Thanks for your support on this quest 😀

Thanks, Ben

P.S. I got feedback from a lot of authors, but if you didn’t share your feedback, please do that here if you want to help me out: https://tally.so/r/aQaPRv